


from heartache from pain

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Arson, Codependency, Gen, Jealousy, Resentment, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 08:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Jason hovers at her shoulder, scarlet and see-through, the bullet hole on his brow a dark mark marring his features. He refuses to turn and show her the back of his head, where the bullet exited. She’d almost be glad of the kindness, glad she does not have to see but… this is her brother. Her brother is dead.She would rather know every facet of his death. She dares not miss a single part.--Jason returns as a ghost.





	from heartache from pain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nectarines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nectarines/gifts).



> I listened to [_Believer_ by Imagine Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhP3J0j9JmY) while listening to this. Because That Scene has made it the _Riverdale_ song for me. The title also comes from the [lyrics](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/imaginedragons/believer.html).
> 
> I confess I slightly merged two of the prompts I was given - Veronica and Cheryl in a 'verse with a touch more of the supernatural. I hope it's ok!

Cheryl wakes, and she can see straight through her brother.

“Jason,” she whispers. She stretches out a hand, and it passes right through him, scarlet swirling around him like blood in water. “Jay-jay,” she says. “Oh God _,_ _Jason.”_

 

* * *

 

She burns Thornhill to the ground that night. Jason hovers at her shoulder, scarlet and see-through, the bullet hole on his brow a dark mark marring his features. He refuses to turn and show her the back of his head, where the bullet exited. She’d almost be glad of the kindness, glad she does not have to see but… this is her brother. Her brother is dead.

She would rather know every facet of his death. She dares not miss a single part.

 

* * *

 

Nana Rose is with her. Nana takes them to some new holding, some cottage at the edge of Thornhill. Nana Rose, it seems, can see Jason.

“Of course I can see him,” she says, as knife-sharp as Penelope ever was but with an edge of affection that was so rare in their family - so rare for Cheryl to ever get to see. “Of course I can see him. I was there at your births, held you in my own two hands.” She extends a paper-pale hand to them both, her fingers knotting with Cheryl’s, ghosting over Jason’s intangibility.

“Your parents broke the rules of this family,” she says, tone as hard as Daddy’s had ever been. “To kill our own? To kill our own for _money_ …” She looks at the fire, seems about to drift off into the aether as she always did back at Thornhill, but she shakes her head, focusses. “The last time family killed family over money there was _trouble._ There will be again.”

Nana Rose’s voice is unwavering, hard as stone, bleak as winter, certain and definite. Cheryl lifts her chin, meets her grandmother’s eyes as Nana Rose says, “You were right to burn them down.”

 

* * *

 

Cheryl goes to school, holds her head high even as her throat is filled with lead. Jason follows at her shoulder, invisible to them all, whispering advice to her - Moose will do what she says if she leverages his bicuriosity, if she offers help or harm to wrangle him. Reggie’s recklessness, Chuck’s misogyny, Archie’s do-gooder attitude hiding a particularly delectable secret. Cheryl doesn’t care for the right or wrongness of blackmail and manipulation, she never has. People never liked her, not her for _her,_ not ever. They liked her because she was a Blossom, and they had to. For being Jason’s sister, Jason whom they loved, and never for herself.

She doesn’t see why she should consider such things as kindness nor consideration when they never showed her any such thing.

Cheryl wrangles the boys as she’s ever ruled the girls, fierce and firm, undoubtable. Cheryl makes herself untouchable lest anyone think she is weak with her brother dead.

 _Dead,_ Cheryl thinks. _Not gone._

 

* * *

 

The new girl… her eyes track a shadow behind Cheryl, a slight frown on her features. She cannot _see_ Jason, that much is certain, but she knows something is there, some shadow at her shoulder that shields her from harm, as definite as Jason ever had been in life. Some fragment of death-not-death, some trailing spirit… she knows, but she does not see, not clearly, not yet.

Veronica Lodge… now there’s someone Cheryl would not have expected to see the dead.

 

* * *

 

They find Jason’s body. Cheryl wants to weep, wants to scream, restrains herself. When Alice Cooper releases the details she _does_ scream, _does_ rage, stalks up to Alice and slaps her across the face with a cry of “How _dare you!_ ”

She has lost her brother, had to remove her unfit parents, has no Thornhill to retreat to any longer.

Cheryl pulls herself tall, looks at the red mark on Alice’s cheek and smiles likes a knife, like ice, like the flames that burned Thornhill to the ground. Listens to the whispering tale Jason spills into her ears. “You really don’t think, do you, Alice? Trying to shame my family, air _our_ dirty laundry… but what about your own?”

Alice looks at her, cheek still red, mouth gaping like a fish.

“What about _Polly?”_

 

* * *

 

Cheryl drives up to the nunnery - that’s what it is, no matter what other name it’s given. Cheryl remembers what Nana Rose told her, of how, long ago, unwed women were sent to Nunneries to have their bastards and, once the child was taken from them, stayed there, hidden away forever.

“I’ve come to see my sister-in-law,” Cheryl says, imperious, proud, defiant against all their tutting. “Take me to Polly Cooper.”

 

* * *

 

Polly can see Jason. Her hands reach out to touch his cheek and, for once, they don’t pass straight through. Jason leans into the touch of Polly’s palms, ghostly lips brushing a kiss against the heel of her hand. Cheryl wonders how it works - how Jason can touch _her_ but can’t touch his own twin sister. She wonders if he loves Polly more than he does her. She hopes that is not true. She looks at the swell of Polly’s belly and reconsiders. Maybe he does love her more. Maybe it is because they are _not_ siblings, are not related. Maybe it is the babe in Polly’s belly, perhaps new life can counter new death.

It doesn’t matter. Jason matters.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and for once it isn’t a whisper but words, loud and clear, falling dead in an odd way rather than echoing off the walls. “I’m sorry. I was caught before I could get to you. I was caught and Dad killed me.”

Polly’s eyes are full of tears and Cheryl thinks _Soft,_ thinks _Weak_ , thinks _Sister-in-law, loved by Jason, pregnant with his child._

Cheryl thinks, _I must be kind to her, for Jay-jay’s sake._

“I’m sorry too,” Polly says. “My parents caught me as well.”

Cheryl does not say anything, not for a long time, until Alice Cooper comes storming in, her cheek still bright and bruised.

 

* * *

 

“How _dare you-”_ Alice Cooper starts.

Cheryl laughs. _Oh the irony._

“How dare _I?_ ” Cheryl asks. “After what _you_ did?”

 

* * *

 

Polly comes with her, back to the cottage. This girl, for all her naivete and folly, for all she took Jason from her, led Jason to his death… she is family, now.

Cheryl has killed family once, in vengeance for their killing. She hopes she will not have to do so again. In the meantime, she offers Polly a place to stay, a share of Thornhill’s wealth, a chance to speak to Jason, ever present at her side.

 

* * *

 

The police consider arresting her, settle for questioning her instead. Cheryl says what she knows; the story she and Jason agreed on, things she learned from Jason that she could claim to have learned from Daddy, just enough information to explain everything but not enough to give them the final trail to her father’s actions.

That, it’s up to them to find.

 

* * *

 

They question Polly too, who tells them the exact same outline - Jason whispering between them to keep their stories perfect. His bloody fingers intangible in Cheryl’s, a firm pressure against Polly’s, his voice soft in both their ears.

He is the one tie between them, the one reason they will fight for each other.

 

* * *

 

“Your brother’s memorial service.” It’s Veronica Lodge, odd and quiet, watching her with dark eyes. “I saw your freakout at the game - I imagine this isn’t going to be any easier.”

Veronica had seen the freakout, not just Cheryl but the shadow that trailed behind her, made clear at last: Jason’s ghost running with the team, overlapping with them, overlapping with Archie so, for a moment, it looked like he was alive again. Veronica Lodge had _seen_ … and then she had come to offer comfort.

The memorial service is coming up, now Jason’s body has been released. Cheryl wonders what she should do for it.

 

* * *

 

Nana Rose helps her pick out the white dress - the dress so similar to the one she’d worn that day with Jason at the river. Cheryl does her make-up - mascara like spiderwebs on her lashes, lipstick and nail polish like blood. Pale skin and crimson hair, crimson make-up and pale dress.

She steps up to the podium to give her eulogy looking far more a bride than Polly - even with her heirloom ring - ever could.

 

* * *

 

The eulogy is painful. She cries. How much is because she would have, wanted to, and how much is because it’s expected she doesn’t know. But she stands tall, feels tears track down her cheeks, drop from her chin, soak through the cloth of her dress, cold against her skin.

“My brother,” she says. Sighs, swallows a hiccup, lifts her head and casts her gaze over the gathered attendees. “Jason Blossom. _Ave atque vale_.”

 

* * *

 

“Who killed him?” Betty asks. “You talk about finding out who did it, but you’re not… I’ve _seen_ you driven, this isn’t that. You _know_ \- don’t you?”

Betty can be as knife-sharp as Penelope or Nana Rose, as knife sharp as her mother, Alice. She sees far more than she lets on, hides it all behinds kindness as her nails cut into her palms. Sometimes, Polly does the same thing, sweetness hiding a sliding blade, ready to slip through skin, slip between ribs.

Cheryl does know. Cheryl has taken her vengeance, watched Thornhill burn to ashes, heard her father’s scream and her mother’s, vengeance taken for the life they took.

To kill their own son, to kill _her brother,_ her _only friend…_

“We must not kill our own,” Nana Rose had said. “Not for money. Nothing good ever comes of it.”

Vengeance though. Vengeance, to take for what was taken.

Cheryl would do it a thousand times again.

“I have suspicions,” she tells Betty. “But not _now._ We can’t hurt Polly.”

 

* * *

 

Polly. Simpering girl, a waste of space. Pretty and blonde and foolish, someone Jason should have fooled around with and moved on from - not _lingered_ with.

But he does. He lingers by Polly’s bedside, strokes an intangible-tangible hand over her belly, lets his fingers press briefly against her palm, her lips. He watches over her as she sleeps, stays near so when she wakes she can reach for him.

Now, with Polly here, Cheryl must search out her brother.

 

* * *

 

“Why?” she asks. Polly sleeps, sleeps gently. Sleeps safely here, away from parents capable of being almost as cruel as their own had been. “Jay-jay. _Why?_ Why her?”

He looks at her, all bloodstains and scarlet, and the copper-gold of his hair, like blood and fire.

He licks his lips, looks back to Polly.

“Why not you,” he says. “That’s what you mean, right?”

 

* * *

 

Always there, lain between them unspoken. Close. Closer than they should be. _Twins._ Everyone had suspected their closeness. Even their parents.

 _Perverted,_ they called her, as though the family didn’t marry distant cousin to distant cousin whenever possible to keep the money in the family, to keep their hair red. _Perverted,_ they called her, blaming every ounce of their closeness on her - not on the parents, for looking down on her. Not on everyone else, for hating her. Not on Jason, for showing her kindness, for being her friend, for being her _brother_ , when their parents could scarcely act that part out.

They looked at a closeness that was just closeness, and judged.

Part of Cheryl wishes she could have watched them burn.

“Why _her,”_ she says. “You never told me. All the others… but you kept it quiet.” She turns to look at her brother, hair pouring over her shoulder in a red cascade. “She’s _pregnant._ You were going to _marry_ her. And you never told me. Not even when you needed me to help.”

Jason’s hand ghosts over her cheek. Barely there, _just_ there. She wonders if it’s the proximity to Polly. She can feel his thumbprint against her skin.

“I wanted to keep her safe,” he says. “From the Serpents, from Dad… I did all I could. I-”

Cheryl lifts her head, swallows her tears. “You didn’t trust me,” she replies. “No one ever does.”

 

* * *

 

Veronica is the one to find her - the one she calls. She’s sat at Pop’s, strawberry milkshake in front of her. She’s stopped, halfway through. She can’t manage more. Half was always what she had, halfsies split with Jason.

She slides it over to Veronica when the other girl hops up onto a stool.

“Have it,” she says. “Can’t finish it.”

Veronica frowns, pulls her bag onto the counter. “You called me,” she says. “Why?”

 

* * *

 

It’s not a long explanation, but it’s a complicated one. It’s a good thing Veronica could already see the shadow of Jason. Otherwise she might have thought Cheryl was crazy.

Well. Crazier.

“That’s how you knew he’d been murdered,” Veronica says. “That’s how you know who did it.”

She’s as sharp-kind as Betty is - sharper, maybe, a blade more obviously drawn, not hidden behind sweetness - as she takes Cheryl’s hands in hers.

“Who killed him, Cheryl? And is there a way we can prove it?”

 

* * *

 

Jason fades as the _Blue & Gold _ prints that morning. As the _Blue & Gold _ is read.

By the time the police conclude that Clifford Blossom was indeed responsible for his son’s death, Jason has faded away to nothing between Polly’s hands.

 

* * *

 

“He’s gone,” Polly says. The paper is held loosely in her hands, pages spilled unevenly across her lap.

“He’s at rest,” Cheryl says. She taps a nail on the paper. “Everyone knows, now. Who’s to blame and that they suffered for it. There’s nothing left to learn.”

“Mom will stop investigating,” Polly says, sobs creeping into her voice. “Betty’s made sure of that. He can be left to- to rest.”

Cheryl nods, licks her lips, smiles. “To rest in peace.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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